The University of Waterloo, also known as "UW" or simply "Waterloo", is a medium-sized research-intensive public university in the city of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The enrollment for 2003 was 21,550 undergraduate and 2,485 graduate students, with 787 full-time faculty members. The University was founded in 1957.
The University of Waterloo was originally conceived in 1955 as the Waterloo College Associate Faculties (WCAF), a semi-autonomous entity within Waterloo College (now Wilfrid Laurier University). Its first classes began in 1957, and two years later it became the University of Waterloo. From its relatively recent and humble origin, UW has come to the forefront of research in Canada. The University of Waterloo now attracts many bright students from across Canada and is widely recognized as one of Canada's premier universities.
Waterloo is famous for being the groundbreaking proponent of co-operative education in Canada and currently maintains the largest such program in the world. Due to this, Waterloo has established strong ties with many major corporations in North America. In the annual Maclean's Magazine university rankings, Waterloo consistently scores within the top three positions in its category (research-intensive institutions with a wide range of undergraduate and graduate programs without medical schools). Since the beginning of Maclean's reputational rankings, Waterloo has placed first overall out of all Canadian universities for 11 years in a row (1992-2002). This remarkable feat ended when Waterloo slipped to second place overall in the 2003 rankings.
The University has faculties of Applied Health Sciences, Arts, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Independent Studies, Mathematics, and Science as well as an on-campus school of Optometry. There are also four federated university colleges with religious affiliations on campus: St. Jerome's University (Roman Catholic), Renison College (Anglican), St. Paul's United College (United Church of Canada), and Conrad Grebel University College (Mennonite).
With strong programs in mathematics, science, computer science, and engineering, the University has at times been touted as the MIT of Canada. In addition, the prowess of Waterloo's students in academic competitions such as the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition and the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest has greatly contributed to the University's reputation in the last few decades. |
